Mary Ellen Springsteen

Empire Volcano "The princess who donated her kingdom"

I enjoyed reading this partial story. The story moves quickly and the chapters flow nicely.I'm interested in learning how the rest of this story plays out. The only recommendation that I would make at this time is proofreading/ editing. Some missing punctuation extraneous or misplaced text may have occurred during the upload for the contest. I can relate to having some broken English in dialogues but not in narration.All in all, this is an interesting read so far. I look forward to seeing the final outcome.

Family Honor

Family Honor is an interesting tale based on sibling interactions. Decisions made in youth cannot always be expunged. Others are impacted. Then there's the guilt ...

This story is down to earth and interesting and to be continued.

There were sparrows

I enjoyed the imagery, the characters and emotions. The story flows well. I would suggest breaking up long blocks of text into smaller paragraphs or inserting some dialogue. This didn't prevent me from following the story. Well done!

The House of Neotar

I rarely read fantasy but I found this story very interesting. I relate to strong female protagonists and use them in my own books. Although this is only part of the whole story, it flows very well and kept my interest.

Family Matters

Psychological research interests me as I have clinical trial experience . Time travel stories are great. I truly enjoyed reading this story and interested to know what follows.

Masks of Morality

I have a technical/ art background and love thrillers. Masks of Morality has engaging characters, an interesting plot,twists and turns and environmental issues. I enjoyed following the characters' adventures & surprises and how they dealt with life's challenges.

Hleo

Y/A fantasy is not my typical genre but Hleo sounded interesting. I must say, that I was pulled in right away and thoroughly enjoyed this story. The typical high school girl-boy relationships, jealousies,etc. were very realistic based on my own children, nieces, nephews and students. Well developed characters and plot.
I wondered about Hannah's father, however. Once he left for England, there seemed to be no contact between him and Hannah. His assistant was from the dark side which left me wondering if he was in danger.
Do I sense a sequel coming up? As a mystery writer, I ask many questions. I would definitely be interested in reading a sequel to Hleo.

One minor suggestion I would make is to proofread again for typos and space gaps that are typical in e-book formatting.

Secrets on the Walls (Book 1)

This is a clever Y/A fantasy with interesting characters and adventures. I would make the following suggestions:

1) a complete proofread for grammar, missing or incorrect words and typos

2) in scenes with more than two characters with dialog, it is not always clear who is speaking. I prefer not overusing 'he said', 'she said' but sometimes it's necessary with more than two people to at least identify one of the speakers.